Telework, Gen Y and the Old School

Here’s a few articles I ran across that kind of strike a cord with me, and in some cases that I both identify with and find funny in their attempt to define something they don’t understand – the youth now entering the workforce.Attracting the twentysomething worker (Fortune)
This article starts out sounds like an out-of-touch parent:

Nearly every businessperson over 30 has done it: sat in his office after a staff meeting and – reflecting upon the 25-year-old colleague with two tattoos, a piercing, no watch and a shameless propensity for chatting up the boss – wondered, What is with that guy?!

…but it also makes some valid points as it tries to find its way:

No one joins a company hoping to do the same job forever. But these days even your neighborhood bartender or barista aspires to own the place someday. What’s more, the ties that have bound members of this age group to jobs in the past – spouse, kids, mortgage – are today often little more than glimmers in their parents’ eyes. So if getting Gen Yers to join a company is a challenge, getting them to stay is even harder.
The key is the same one their parents have used their whole lives – loving, encouraging and rewarding them. What that amounts to in corporate terms is a support network, work that challenges more than it bores, and feedback. “The loyalty of twentysomethings is really based on the relationships they have with those directly above them,” says Dorsey, the “Reality Check” author. “There’s a perception among management that those relationships shouldn’t be too personal, but that’s how we know they care about us.”

The price of gasoline may finally be changing the way many people commute and communicate but the picture isn’t all rosy. Anecdotal evidence says teleworkers are growing rapidly as a direct result of the cost of driving.

For Ahmad, ‘back in the day’ was the period of his youth, not any specific historical period. . . . It’s not just used in the temporal sense, like ‘back in the days of Ronald Reagan, blacks was catchin’ hell!’ It can also be used to index a particular cultural value, such as modesty, integrity, as in ‘back in the day, we ain’t have no $150 Air Jordans — we wore whatever we got our hands on.’